


every me, every you

by dykejonze



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Related, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mentions of War, Non-Chronological, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 19:08:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7519775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dykejonze/pseuds/dykejonze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s with a start that Erwin realizes, now and only now, after all this time and all that hurt, that the Levi of his dreams, his memories, the boy from the Underground with that fierceness, that fight, that desire to live, to burn, his captain who would follow him into Hell with unwavering trust, with love, left him long ago, has been gone perhaps for centuries. He knows now, without a doubt, that this is his punishment, this sadness that constricts and binds and consumes, this exhaustion that he has breathed into the only person who has ever given Erwin’s cursed existance any meaning. One thousand years or more of suffering, and it is his doing and his alone. He has taken everything Levi has ever had, whether the man was willing to give it or not, and has left him empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every me, every you

It was never truly his, the life he was born into. He’d known it from childhood, born with memories of monsters, of a war with no end. Erwin Smith was born with the memories of cable wires shooting out with the pull of a trigger, sending an army through the air, of blades and blood that evaporates, of blood that stays. He was born with the memories of a man who had lived two decades before he saw the sun, of fierce gray eyes and a sharp tongue, a man who was small and beautiful and meant to fly. His little bird. He was born with the memories of a broken promise and the knowledge that he is meant to find this man, this little bird, a knowledge that he keeps private, learning early on that others will not take kindly to these strange memories. A vivid imagination in childhood turns into a concerning quirk verging on madness as an adult and he quiets himself. His bird is in his dreams, in the shadows in his waking life, waiting. This life was never truly his, but he will live it if only so that he can prove to himself that this man exists, that somewhere he is looking for him too. 

This is the first time, and perhaps it is due to his own naivety that he accepts without question the idea that he is fated to live again, to spend his life dedicated to a man he has yet to meet-- maybe never will meet. He does not question the absurdity of it all, the guilt that consumes him for deaths he, now, has never seen, the desperate need for the man in his dreams, the name he finds himself whispering like a prayer as he lies in bed at night, eyes fixed towards the heavens: _Levi, Levi, Levi._ He questions nothing, fixated, obsessed, but somewhere someone was waiting for him, and in the end it’s all that matters. 

_Levi, Levi, Levi._

It happens at last during the winter of 1901, and Erwin is on the train, alone with a first class ticket in a quiet, comfortable car, off to visit a friend of the family (by obligation rather than by his own desire, but he’s resolved to be nothing but pleasant-- he always is, when he can help it, after all). He is reading the paper when a silent stranger shuffles in, sliding into the seat directly across, a simple bag tossed beside him. Queen Victoria is dead. The stranger lights a cigarette, slumps against the window with a sigh. At half a glance it’s a man, a boy perhaps, small and dark and unremarkable in every way save for his stature and his unusually sharp angles. He is drowning in worn and ill fitting but well-kept clothes. It’s a wonder what a man like that is doing in a first class car. Erwin has no intention to gaze fully but there’s a nagging at his chest, a flash from a dream, from a memory, a whisper. A name. Blue eyes flicker up, the train is moving-- he meets half-lidded gray, head against a curled fist, cigarette dangling between thin lips. Gray eyes meet his, cool impassivity turning to shock, head lifting. The cigarette is crushed against the sill of the window by a slow, hesitant hand. 

And then there’s a weight against his chest, coming at him so fast it knocks him back into his seat and he almost forgets to wind his arms around the smaller body, to cradle him like something precious, something sacred. There’s a muffled choked out sob, “Oh _fuck_ ,” into Erwin’s shirt, drenched in relief, and Erwin wonders how long Levi’s gone thinking he was simply insane. He’s beautiful, he always has been but especially now, real and whole and his, and Erwin thanks every god he can think of for this second chance-- for that’s what this must be, a blessing, a way to make amends for the lives he’s taken, the men and women and children he once sent off to die. A miracle.

“Levi… _Levi._ ” 

\--

Levi had never been to a funeral. People came and people went, and death was simply another part of life, but funerals were expensive and nobody he ever knew could afford to have one. He tried not to think of what would become of their bodies, where they would go or if it even mattered at all. Farlan would have said it didn’t, a body was a sack after all, a container for something else, something bigger, but Farlan was dead and Levi was always a skeptic. 

“But you feel it,” Farlan had said, after he’d gotten sick and before he’d given up hope of getting well again. “Don’t you?” His voice was hoarse from coughing, his skin was pale but he held Levi in a grip so strong that it was easy for Levi to trick himself, to convince himself everything would be fine in the end. 

He knew what Farlan meant, felt it like Farlan did, but it was a muddle of images, of pain and sorrow, hunger and blood and loss. It wasn’t so different than where he already was, and he’d prefer to feel nothing at all. There were always dreams, always the feeling of two men tugging at him from either side, Farlan grasping his left arm, another man, stronger and larger and commanding, tugging his right. The strong man, his Commander, would win, and the dreams told him that someday he wouldn’t miss Farlan like he would when there was all that tugging. It scared him, left his insides twisting in anxiety. He didn’t want those dreams at all. 

“You’re cold,” He said instead of answering, hugging the man close, willing their embrace to be enough to heal what was broken. “Stop talking shit and get some sleep.” 

He knows what Farlan meant, but Farlan is dead so it doesn’t matter what he felt then, what he feels now. There is only the Commander, the man with the bright blue eyes and terrifying ambition, the man who says his name like it’s something wonderful and whose stoic face breaks into the softest smile when their eyes meet-- the man he has yet to meet and doubts is real at all. The Commander is the only source of comfort he has left and it scares him even more. 

Levi has never been to a funeral and with Farlan it’s no exception. He doesn’t ask what will become of the man’s body, but he stays in Farlan’s tiny flat for three weeks and breathes him in until he’s sure he’ll never forget. Sickness hangs in the air, suspended and hovering, and for the first time in his life Levi feels no urge to scrub it out of his skin, to purge it from his body. He doesn’t want to scrub anything, to move anything, for anything to change unless it means turning around and seeing Farlan alive and well and asleep. Three weeks is all it takes, because the Commander is greeting him every night, arms strong and enveloping. He laughs in Levi’s ear, a low, warm sound that stays with him in the morning. He promises things that feel like lies and Levi jolts awake feeling hollow and more lonely than he did when he went to bed. 

It doesn’t feel right sleeping in a dead man’s house and dreaming of someone else, even if that someone doesn’t exist. He certainly doesn’t exist. Levi leaves Farlan behind when he awakes with a name dripping from his mouth, thick and heavy and too familiar to ignore. 

_Erwin._

He leaves London by train that winter with a single bag, his meager belongings carefully balled up inside. Two changes of clothes, a tintype of his mother, Farlan’s favorite necktie. He does not know the man he steals his ticket from, knows only that those who do not wish to be pickpocketed should not make it so easy. 

The last car is occupied by one man-- blue eyes. He says Levi’s name like it’s something wonderful. 

\--

Wings of Freedom. 

He hadn’t meant to find them. It had been an innocent enough search, he’s never been one to snoop through other people’s personal belongings, least of all Levi’s. The captain is a private man after all, and Erwin has long accepted that he will never know everything about him. Some things are simply too painful to put into words. It had been his own clumsiness, really, that had led to the discovery, knocking over the small bottle of oil, sending it plummeting down, its fall broken by the miracle that was a drawer cracked open, landing atop of something soft enough that it hardly made a sound. Expecting nothing more private than perhaps a few pairs of underwear-- probably folded, he almost chuckled at the thought-- he pulled it open. He hadn't meant to find them but here they are, laying blood splattered in a pile in the top drawer in the small dresser, and he stands frozen. 

There are too many to count without pulling them out one by one, and the idea of doing so seems to Erwin like such a violation that the temptation sickens him. Still, he is unable to stop himself from reaching in, not to grab but to run thick fingers along the embroidered fabrics, pushing them around the otherwise empty drawer. Apart from the stains of red, they lie undamaged, painstakingly pried from their cloaks by a gentle hand, nimble fingers that crave something solid to hold on to in a world so overrun with chaos, with fear. With death. 

The door closes. A soft sound, the tiniest thud, but he jumps. Levi is a master of sneak attacks even when he’s not trying, coming up from behind without even the smallest of sounds. The sound of his footsteps only exist when there is intention behind them, a purpose that demands something more than what he is otherwise able to provide. But he does not seek to intimidate Erwin. 

“I was just…” The 13th Commander of the Survey Corps feels suddenly like a child being caught with his hand in a cookie jar, his fingers fumbling around the bottle he’d been searching for in the first place. He holds it up, displaying the excuse that had yet to be demanded of him, searching Levi’s features for some kind of clue, the crack he could pry apart with his hands, but there is nothing discernable on the smaller man’s face. No trace of anger, of betrayal, no questions burning behind gray eyes. He steps quietly into the room, sliding his jacket from his slender frame. “I wasn’t trying to be… invasive, or… or push an--” 

“It’s fine.” There’s no bite in Levi’s voice and it occurs suddenly to Erwin that he really has no idea why he’d expect the man to be angry with him at all, why he would assume the man would feel some automatic animosity towards him for finding something so personal, so very human, when they’d been engaging in something that was so much more than just a sexual relationship for the better part of the last three years. “You can put that away.” 

He looks down at the bottle still clutched in his fist, still held out like a peace offering, and quickly turns to put it back where it had come from. Levi is at his side so suddenly that, had he not been used to it by now, the strange silent quickness that carried the Captain from place to place, it would have startled him. Instead, he looks down at the man who only peers into the drawer that’s been left open, brows furrowed in contemplation. Erwin knows Levi, this Levi, like the back of his hand, knows how he works, how words pile up in his mouth and become a twisted knot of nothing that he’s left to pull apart and unscramble by hand. 

“I’m not asking you for an explanation.” He says, voice soft, but Levi shakes his head-- so Erwin asks. “Friends?” It sounds stupid even as it leaves his mouth. Levi considers few to be his friends, too few to account for the mass of torn out fabric in the drawer, but the expected scoff never comes. 

“Not really.” 

“Then…?”

“New recruits, mostly.” Levi looks up at last, and Erwin wonders if he doesn’t know him as well as he thought he did. It goes unspoken, and Erwin doesn’t need it said to hear it: _So someone remembers them._

Later, bodies pressed together in the tangled bedsheets, Erwin catches himself staring at the drawer again. An easy smile creeps onto his face as he’s pulled back down by hands much smaller than his own, and his arms wind around the man’s body. 

He does not ask if he’ll be a patch in the drawer when his time comes, and if Levi can feel the question hovering over their heads, he bats it away, his head a welcome weight against Erwin’s chest, inky black hair spilling around him like a halo. 

“I still have work to do before sleep, Little Bird.” 

“Tomorrow.” Levi says with a yawn, and in another lifetime Erwin will think back on that night and wish he’d stayed until tomorrow. Instead, he leaves him with a parting kiss, with guilt creeping up behind him as he steals one last glance at that damn drawer. 

The Commander’s work is never done, and the blood on his hands never washes off-- but it won’t be meaningless. 

\--

“Who do you think they’d kill slower? You for fucking me, or me for letting myself get fucked?” 

From where Erwin stands, still naked and hunched over the table, large map spread wide in front of him, he can only afford to spare a weary glance and a tired smile. Their moments alone have become few and far between, often brief and impersonal. Levi is dressing already, and more than a quick look would have Erwin begging him to stay. He swallows, not allowing himself to watch. “We’d both be clubbed regardless. Are you worried?”

“No. We don’t belong here.” 

Absorbed in his maps and his war, Erwin forgets to ask what Levi means. When he remembers to look up again, he’s standing alone. 

\--

A roar of laughter ripples through the pub, heads thrown back, flagons slamming against heavy wood. The men around the table are not men Erwin is acquainted with, despite the uniforms that match with his own and the battlefield they shared not a day before, but he finds himself envious of their mirth, their youth, everything they have that he knows he must have had once, too. It could have been years-- it could have been lifetimes. Keeping track is getting difficult and he’s had far too much to drink, an occurrence becoming all too common these days. His own group has scattered, lost in the horde, and it’s with intention that he hardly bothers to seek them out. His eyes are fixed on the men ahead, until a hulking figure is at his side, reclaiming the seat he’d given up some twenty-minutes before. Mike with a sloshing pint and an easy smile, his fourth of the night, as far as Erwin noticed, but the man holds his liquor better than most, calm and quiet as ever. They don’t speak for some time, Erwin sulking and Mike letting him sulk, which he is, and has always been, unspeakably thankful for. 

He forces his gaze away from the men he doesn’t know, realizing too late that they had been all that was keeping him from finding the small, dark figure looming in the crowd. Levi with his back against a wall, with his arms folded and his own drink abandoned-- empty, perhaps, and Erwin is tempted to buy him another round, as many as he wants if it would get his attention. But Levi is not paying attention to him, has barely glanced his way all night, and it’s becoming so painfully typical that Erwin doesn’t know how to feel angry or hurt or anything other than desperate. 

“You’ve noticed it, haven’t you?” His voice breaks the silence that exists only in his corner, quiet, hesitant and hopeful, a silent prayer hanging between them that it’s all in his head, that he’s becoming some paranoid, drunken fool, a symptom of the blow to his head he’d recieved months before after falling from his horse. Across the room, a fresh drink is plunged into Levi’s hand, one he accepts it with a nod. It sends a throbbing ache to Erwin’s chest, leaves his throat suddenly dry, fingers clenched around his glass as he swallows a burning mouthful of gin. The jealousy doesn’t become less maddening as Hanji comes into view beside him, mouth and hands moving in wild, exaggerated gestures-- always the same old, always excitable and loud, Levi’s complimentary opposite. He mumbles something back to them, something that causes their head to throw back in laughter. Erwin looks for it on baited breath, looks for the slight upward tug of his lips, for a small hand to reach up and ruffle the mess of dark hair, for Levi to come back from whatever far away place he’s been lost in. It doesn’t come. The ache is unbearable. Mike says nothing, though Erwin senses his eyes have followed, that little explanation is needed. “He’s different.” 

He waits for Mike to say something reasonable, something reassuring. He waits for that voice of reason he has always counted on, _“We’re all different, Erwin,”_ or a bitter joke. But a desperate glance back finds Mike’s gaze resting on the vacant man who doesn’t tease or banter or prod the way he used to, who stands like an empty shell that looks and sounds and speaks and smells the way Levi always has, and there’s a sick twist in the pit of Erwin’s stomach, the sudden urge to vomit. He wants to leave, wants to grab Levi by the arm and drag him away. He wants to fall asleep and wake up again in a different world, in a different life. He feels insane, wonders almost hysterically if he can fix this, if he can force Levi back into existence. 

Mike speaks with a resigned sigh, with his arms resting heavy on the table in defeat. “He is different.” 

The men that had captured Erwin’s attention before have launched into a rowdy rendition of a battle song, banging their fists and belting out their own lyrics when creative license seems fit. He’ll recognize their faces in the bloody piles in the grass days later, eyes wide and jaws slack. They aren’t his deaths anymore, this isn’t his war, and he reminds himself repeatedly as he searches the field for Levi, lips still stinging from the rough kiss that was pressed to him early that morning, hands tangled in the collar of his shirt with sudden desperation, Erwin’s insides still a mess from the night at the pub. It all felt too much like goodbye. 

He looks so much smaller splayed out on the ground. 

\--

There’s no peace at sea. The body disappears too quickly, and Levi watches it go. Behind him, his name. Death happens at sea, the way it happens everywhere else. But it seems to follow them most especially. 

He turns when the last traces of Farlan are gone, and falls into step behind Erwin, hollow. He doesn’t allow the apology at the tip of the man’s tongue. 

“He’s had worse.” He says in the privacy of the great cabin. Erwin can only nod in agreement, simply relieved that he’d been able to convince Levi to let someone else clean up the blood that stained the deck. 

\--

“Don’t go.” He thought he would have something more to say, something sound, something convincing. In his mind, this goes differently, it goes better, for one thing. In his mind he’s three steps ahead and already winning, but that’s never really how it is with Levi, who lets him get away with nothing and forgives even less. Levi, who’s laugh is cruel and hollow, incredulous, who loves and hates with the same fierceness, who loves and hates all at once. This is not the first time Erwin has found himself at a loss for words, and though Levi expects more from him, expects answers, expects resolution, he has nothing. It is 1966, and a Sunday. The next-doors are walking home from church, their little girl’s shrill laughter breaking through the barrier between the peaceful outside and them, their destruction. Erwin is only thankful that they missed the worst of the shouting, the fist to the wall, the slamming doors. They’re a nice family, after all, perfectly willing to overlook the oddity that is a respected professor living in such a small home with such a young man-- his nephew, he tells them, a lie he is sure they see through but do not question all the same. 

Levi’s got a bag packed in his hand and another waiting in the back seat of the ever-unreliable Mustang he’d inherited after his uncle (his real uncle) died from heart failure two years before, and “don’t go” isn’t enough, it isn’t a reason, it isn’t anything tangible. He raises a thin brow and he waits, and Erwin has nothing else to say. This is not how it’s supposed to go, this chance, this do-over, this new life. It isn’t supposed to end this way, and yet here they are, and Levi scoffs, turns away. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go but this is how it happens and Levi will let go and he won’t turn back. He will leave, and he will forget Erwin. He will forget Erwin’s perfect blonde hair and easy smile, the warmth of strong arms wrapping around him, the low, smooth voice that whispers and plays and commands in his ears. He will forget that it hurts to look at Erwin, hurts to share his space, hurts to love him. He will forget, and he will keep living, alone if he has to. 

“Levi, please.” A hand on the doorknob, he shakes his head. Erwin’s plea is loud and desperate, a strangled shout that cuts through the silence like a knife. “You can’t.” 

“Watch me.” 

A resounding slam echoes off the walls and it’s raining as Levi drives away-- of course it is, like a romance novel or a cheesy film, like the one they’d gone to some months before when Levi leaned over and whispered, “This is shit, Erwin,” three towns away so nobody they knew would see. Two men together was bad enough, a risk to Erwin’s job even with the luxury of tenure, a risk to Levi’s entire life, one that, for once had so much more in store for him, so much left to look forward to. Levi had always been younger. Two decades and some extra years this time, and though Erwin knows that it’s not the difference in age, his own inability to keep in touch with the younger generations or Levi’s youthful immaturity, that is breaking them, tearing them limb from limb and leaving them ragged, he finds it a tempting aspect to lay the blame on. But the truth is he knows little about this Levi, who he is-- was?-- before they found each other once again, realizes with a sickening jolt that he has never really bothered to learn what makes Levi in one life different from Levi in the next. 

But he is different. Time passes and his Levi, his little bird from the Underground, gets further and further away from him while he stays so painfully the same. For the first time it is all so blaringly obvious, spelled out for him in a way that makes his head spin, and he realizes that he has been a fool to think that this was any kind of miracle, any kind of way to atone for the blood on his hands. The blood is still there, as dark and red as a fresh wound. He thinks perhaps that this is no miracle after all, but his punishment. His hell. 

Erwin drinks every night. On weekdays he starts when his last class of the day lets out at five on the dot and goes until he passes out shortly after eleven, the world a blur with graded papers spilled out in front of him, with Levi at the kitchen table busting out an essay on an old typewriter-- another inheritance from his uncle, the keys sticking from age but he refused Erwin’s offer for a new one, insisting that it worked just fine. Perhaps he’d turn it into Erwin himself in the morning, pushing the small stack of papers into his hands with a hurried “here” before rushing out the door to catch the train. Erwin drives and is always late. Levi hates being late and he’s a terrifying driver, his graceful mastery of 3DMG proving to be no match for the wheel, the Mustang spending most of its time at their home untouched in the garage. 

On weekends Erwin starts at noon and today is no exception. He feels ill, feels like he’s dying, heart throbbing and sinking and burning in his stomach only to be spit out again, only to continue to throb and sink and burn. He’s a wine man, prefers white unless he’s eating red meat, drinks bottle upon bottle out of a glass to spare himself a few remaining shreds of dignity. Today he has nothing left to spare and so he drinks straight from the bottle itself. He goes about his day as usual, ignoring the empty hangers in his closet, the cleared out drawers in his dresser. He reads the paper through thick glasses and tries to ignore the ultimately absolutely unignorable fact that Levi is gone.

When Levi returns that night, it’s in silence. Padding past Erwin, unconscious in his chair with an empty bottle in his lap, he unpacks his clothes and puts them away, folded, pressed, and hung. 

\--

In Ghent he paints the crumbling walls he never lived to see, cascading in a cloud of dust. His home on the Leie river is a modest one, small and quiet, his and his alone. He paints the world he knew then, the forests filled with corpses, filled with monsters, the claustrophobic filth of the Underground. Peace finds him at last, far from the faces that haunt him when he sleeps. Far from blue eyes. 

Levi paints burning remains of Shiganshina to let it go, and then he burns the canvas while the guildsmen revolt in the streets. He paints it again after the hanging, 25 pairs of dangling feet leaving him shaken. Blue eyes would always find him somehow. 

\--

Stars are new. Erwin can tell by the way Levi’s face softens as he tilted his head towards the sky, by the childlike wonder in his eyes, the way he holds his breath until it escapes in a heavy sigh. It’s hard to look away. 

“I _am_ sorry,” He says, and wonders if he’s being as intrusive as he feels-- decides ultimately that Levi would say so if he was. He wonders if his words mean anything, if he would ever forget the hard, angry tears that streaked down the man’s face to mix with the rain and the blood that didn’t belong to him. The snarling hatred that looks nothing like the calm that’s come over him now. “About your friends.” 

Levi doesn’t move, doesn’t turn his head, but Erwin can sense his gaze shifting, and it unsettles him in a way he can’t quite place. Slowly, Levi raises an arm, fingers outstretched to the sky. 

“You know about those things?”

“The stars?” A grunt comes in response. Erwin takes it as a ‘yes’, and invites himself to sit beside him, following where Levi is pointing. “I know a little.”

“Tell me.”

\--

“It'll happen again.” And there it is. There’s no avoiding it, this talk, not anymore when they can feel it coming from the moment they meet, threatening to burst through and destroy the lives they build together. There’s no avoiding it, but it doesn’t stop Levi from trying. He stiffens. 

“Stop.” They share an apartment together. It had been Farlan’s, before they found each other, faces picked out of a crowd, so unlikely that Levi could only suppose they had been looking for each other. He’s sitting on the kitchen counter, legs dangling off the edge. Farlan is cooking dinner, and it comes up as easily as a comment on the weather, as easily as a joke they’ve shared for centuries-- but it’s not a joke and nobody is laughing. 

“It happens every time, doesn't it? We can't keep pretending”

“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“I'm going to die, Levi.” A beat. A silence, painful, twisting. Farlan looking at Levi who looks anywhere but back at him. “You'll find him again though, yeah? And you'll be ok… won’t you?”

“Why do you have to talk about this shit? Just stop.” Levi has already gotten off the counter, is already leaving the room because he won’t listen to this anymore, won’t talk about it. It happens everytime and perhaps he’s selfish for running away from it-- after all, he isn’t the one who has to live with the knowledge that he’s been sentenced to death by some unspeakable force, some absurd cosmic bullshit. But Farlan doesn’t remember the way Levi remembers, the way Erwin remembers. Nobody does, it seems, because they move on in quiet acceptance, in some kind of peace, some kind of normalcy that hasn’t been afforded to him. 

“Won’t you?” The question hits him again from the doorway where Farlan leans into the frame, brows furrowed, arms limp at his side, and he can’t talk about this, not now or ever again. He can’t live through this again, through loving and losing everyone, losing Farlan, losing everything and then there’s always Erwin-- Erwin who takes more than he can give, who Levi will give more than what he has willingly, who will consume him whole and in the end Levi loses him too. He’s folding laundry because it keeps his hands too busy to shake and he pretends he doesn’t know what Farlan is talking about anymore because he can’t talk about this. 

“Won’t I, what.” He turns away to swallow the lump in his throat, the lump that will make his voice waver instead of lie flat. It doesn’t get easier, it weighs him down, leaving him mourning for a man who has yet to die, who lives and breathes by his side. Every day Farlan is left alive, there are a hundred thousand more that will be denied to him-- and then there’s Erwin. 

Farlan charges forward, never one to let things go, stubborn and pigheaded as always. He presses and pushes at the walls Levi builds around himself, kicks and scratches and breaks them down piece by piece, refusing to be shut out. Levi will crush under his hands and his alone like a flower that can’t bloom on its own, petals pulled apart one by one. Without him he turns to stone, and every day without him Levi becomes harder until there’s nothing human left in him. 

“Won’t you be ok?” Arms snake around him and the shirt in his hands drops to the bed in a crumpled pile, sure to wrinkle, but Farlan’s breath is warm against his neck when he ducks down to press a kiss against his skin. He wants nothing more than to sink into the embrace. Instead he bristles. “Levi?”

In a month Farlan will be dead, and then there will be Erwin who will try with every bit of strength he has to find the man Levi once was, to pry him apart petal by petal and love him only to bruise against bitter, unbreakable rock. In a month Farlan’s car will be flipped and crushed and burning on the freeway and there will be nothing left for Levi to say goodbye to. A closed casket wake, a small and impersonal funeral paid for by his distant father. His mother won’t make it, unreachable on a Buddhist retreat she’d left for two years before to “find herself”. And then there will be Erwin. 

“No.” Farlan stiffens around him, breath catching-- guilt that does not belong to him, that Levi thrusts into him with a single word. In a month he will be dead and that word will be running him through, will revive him in another life and stay with him. Somewhere in time even he has lost Levi. There is no going back. “Don’t ask me anymore.” 

\--

“Don’t go.” It is 2016 and a Sunday. Somehow it always comes to this, to him begging, and he thinks now that he understands the hopelessness the man before him once felt begging him for something so similar and yet so incredibly different. Another time, another life. Erwin expects venom, biting, poison sinking into him and infecting him because Levi’s anger, his bitterness, is a deadly force, a quick killer that can bring him to his knees in a second. He expects destruction, something worse than the broken dish that had flown at the wall, the glass in the carpet Levi hates so much, he expects the world to end. He waits on baited breath for a cruel laugh, a punch in the face, the door to slam-- for anything. 

But Levi stands frozen in the middle of his own chaos like some kind of vengeful god, like a lost child and his eyes are impossibly wide and filled not with contempt but pain. It’s a twisting kind of pain and, like a knife to the gut, it means to do more than simply wound. It’s a kind of pain that, after lifetimes upon lifetimes, after centuries of loving and losing and fucking and fighting, after the Titans and after wars and after so much blood, Erwin has never seen before. Not in Levi, who is strong and unstoppable, who could move mountains with a glare or a soft, hesitant touch. Levi, who breaks him, Levi who makes him whole. 

Levi who is broken and tired and will always love a dead man and a dead life more than he could ever love Erwin here and now, who is not here by his own volition but by a cruel twist of fate, who once made the wrong choice and will never have one again. It’s with a start that Erwin realizes, now and only now, after all this time and all that hurt, that the Levi of his dreams, his memories, the boy from the Underground with that fierceness, that fight, that desire to live, to burn, his captain who would follow him into Hell with unwavering trust, with love, left him long ago, has been gone perhaps for centuries. He knows now, without a doubt, that this is his punishment, this sadness that constricts and binds and consumes, this exhaustion that he has breathed into the only person who has ever given Erwin’s cursed existance any meaning. One thousand years or more of suffering, and it is his doing and his alone. He has taken everything Levi has ever had, whether the man was willing to give it or not, and has left him empty.

And still he asks again, a desperate man, a dying man, a hand shooting out to curl around Levi’s wrist, to hold him there. “Please… don’t leave me.” 

Levi doesn’t look at him, head hung, stormy eyes baring into the floor, burning into that awful carpet (it’s tacky and he hates it, he always has, meant to pull it out when they bought the house but how can he when simply getting out of bed is a chore on its own?). He shakes his head, and when he speaks his voice is a hoarse whisper, as broken as the rest of him, and Erwin wishes for death, for the finality that’s been denied to him, he wishes to go back to the beginning and start over, because he begs “don’t leave me,” and Levi chokes.

“I can’t.” 

Erwin led him into Hell and eagerly, he followed. They didn’t know he’d never be allowed to climb back out. 

He carries Levi to bed, the way he thinks he did once a long time ago, in a life where they made sense together, where they needed each other to stay grounded, to stay sane. The smaller man wraps his arms around Erwin’s neck, lays down his head and closes his eyes, and Erwin’s chest aches with longing under that weight. There is nothing to keep them grounded here, no sense to be made, and if Levi still loves him at all it is only because he doesn't have anything else left to love. The broken glass lies forgotten in the carpet, and he resolves to have it all pulled up in the morning. Levi’s stare is fixed on the wall when he burrows under the blankets but he lets Erwin hold him for the first time in months, allows his body to sink into the man’s warmth and Erwin supposes he has that to be thankful for if nothing else. He thinks about Farlan, who Levi does not cry for but mourns in continuous silence. They would have had a very different life, the two of them, and a very different love. A real one, perhaps. He wants to ask the question that forms bitter on his tongue, that clings and hangs and threatens to slip, _do you love me, Levi?_ but he’s not been able to touch him like this in so long that the thought of losing this moment hurts more than the hollow answer he doesn’t really need.

He presses his face into the back of Levi’s head, into the pillow of inky hair and breathes in the scent that has never changed, the one constant he can hold on to. 

“Erwin,” Levi doesn’t turn to face him, doesn’t move under his arm. The steady pattern of his breathing doesn’t change and if his voice hadn’t been so clear, so firm, Erwin might have thought he had fallen asleep. He lets his hand come up to touch the soft pale skin of Levi’s cheek, to stroke in tender movements the man had taken to cringing away from, and it’s with short-lived relief that he only feels Levi’s slender frame relax a little more, move a little closer. “I’m fucking tired.” 

Short-lived relief. It’s not the sleepless nights he’s talking about, not the fighting, not the monotony of a painfully typical dysfunctional marriage. It’s all of it, from the beginning until now. It’s the Underground, it’s the Titans. It’s the invention of the engine, it’s modern medicine, it’s living in a two-story house with a working toilet and paying the bills online. It’s living and dying and living again, time and space and everything else. It’s Farlan. It’s him. Births and weddings and funerals and memories, far too many for one human being. Far too many for someone who has so little to look back upon fondly. Unending, eternal, it’s Hell. This is Hell. 

Erwin draws a breath that shakes, that quivers his lower lip, and he swallows it whole. He presses a kiss to the crown of Levi’s head and pretends to take the admission for what he wishes it was. He wills a smile to tug at his lips, pushed with enough force to break him, to knock down a wall. His bird doesn’t fly anymore and he can’t remember the last time he has. His bird curls into a ball and hugs his knees to his chest and waits for it all to end. 

“Sleep, love.” He murmurs, tightening his hold to keep Levi from vanishing altogether, to grasp desperately at whatever is left of his captain, his heart, his light in the dark. As if waiting for permission, the man in his arms exhales. He used to fight sleep with all the strength of one hundred men or more but now it is all he has, all that makes the endless days and nights pass by. Erwin can count to ten and by the end of it Levi will be asleep, dead to the world until brutal memories push him violently home, waking him, eyes wide, in a cold sweat. 

His bird doesn’t fly anymore and it is with fear and angry tears that Erwin allows the bitter truth to sink in. He will never fly again.

\--

“I’d find you anywhere. A thousand times over.” It comes out of nowhere, breaking through the stillness of the night and hanging in the air between them, words so weighted that Erwin himself isn’t sure what he meant anymore. At his side, Levi snorts, still curled on his side, back pressed against Erwin’s chest for what, he realizes too suddenly, could be the last time. It’s a dizzying sort of thought, bitter and filling, a feeling he has no business with when he’s made his mind up and given his orders. The Commander is not allowed here, in their space, in his bed--their bed. It’s Levi’s rule, _“don’t talk about work with your dick up my ass”_ , and it’s one that is broken frequently by them both. 

Levi rolls onto his stomach, his face shrouded in darkness but Erwin can make out the furrow of his brows, the downturn of his lips, having pieced together what even Erwin could not and disapproving of it entirely. “What a shitty existence.” 

It takes Erwin by surprise, his own brows raising as his eyes adjust to the night. The blanket falls from around Levi’s shoulders as he props himself up onto his elbows and he can see the strange splatter of scars that dance across his upper back, the faint bruising from the harness he wears too tight. If Erwin was truly a brave man, he would reach out and trace them with his fingers, press gentle kisses to his skin that were meant to heal. Erwin is ruthless and cunning, a daring man, a gambler-- but he’s not brave, and he’s not deserving of the love and devotion the other man so blindly pushes on him, and so he keeps his singular arm by his side. 

“And this isn’t a shitty existence?” He muses, and it earns another snort from Levi, a soft huffing laugh that’s reserved for him and him alone. 

“This is where we’re meant to be.” Levi’s eyes slip shut and he gives a tired sigh. Always exhausted and always awake. Erwin knows better than anyone that Levi’s already had his few hours of sleep, that he’ll lay awake until the sun begins to creep through the blinds. Maybe it will be the last time. 

“ _This_ … we might never--” He thinks about a quiet tea shop, a little house overlooking the sea. A world and a life without the Titans, without the military or the Underground, letting himself dwell just this once, a forbidden indulgence-- because it might be the last time. “We might never have the kind of ending we want… to all of this.”

“Then we don’t have it. The end.” 

“It’s all or nothing, then?”

“What the fuck are you muttering?”

“You want all or nothing.” 

“Fuck. Yeah, I guess. All or nothing.” Turning again, Levi’s cheek is warm pressed to Erwin’s chest and he can feel the soft tickle of long lashes blinking against his skin. It does little to soothe him, but he finds his arm winding around the smaller frame at last. He won’t let himself wonder anymore if they will ever be like this again-- if they’ll still be there, breathing and whole, two days from now. “We’re not meant anywhere else, Erwin. This is what we’ve got.” 

He presses a kiss to the crown of Levi’s head, burrows in the soft black bed of hair. “Perhaps you’re right, Little Bird.” 

He’s drifting when he catches Levi’s voice, quiet, thoughtful and careful in the way that only Levi’s voice could ever be. “It’s enough.”

If Erwin was a selfless man, he would have been satisfied. But Erwin is not selfless, and has never claimed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> this was literally the most emotionally draining thing ive written in my life never let me do it again.


End file.
